Chemical Processing

Phoenix Contact and Flowserve join Endress+Hauser’s Open Integration Partner Program, which strives to mitigate risks when commissioning customer plant by ensuring that operators can easily integrate their devices and components into automation systems, according to the company. Phoenix Contact and Flowserve join eight companies already in the program: AUMA Riester, HIMA Paul Hildebrandt, Honeywell Process Solutions, Mitsubishi Electric, Pepperl+Fuchs, Rockwell Automation, R. STAHL and Schneider Electric.
Although today’s communication components (HART, PROFIBUS, FOUNDATION Fieldbus, EtherNet/IP or PROFINET) are rigorously tested, there are still countless ways in which they can be combined and there is a residual risk that minor…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Understand what achieving an effective predictive maintenance program entails

Processors have relied on gas chromatographs (GCs) since the 1950s to provide real-time compositional data to control systems. Today, tens of thousands of GCs serve in a diverse range of plants — making the GC the analytical workhorse for online…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Mettler Toledo offers SmartCal, a test substance offering a fast way to verify the performance of a moisture analyzer, according to the company. Using SmartCal, performance testing reportedly takes 10 minutes and it is done in the same easy way as a regular moisture measurement.
Additionally, as an overall functionality assessment, SmartCal simultaneously tests both the heating and weighing units, according to Mettler Toledo. When results lie within expected tolerances, it lends validity to all measurements made since the previous test. These results are viewed in a series of clear, readable measurement reports for straightforward monitoring. They can either be stored directly in the instrument or manually entered into a free, validated…

After a three-year software evaluation period, BP reportedly selects aeSolutions’ aeShield to assist asset personnel in monitoring control, alarm and safety instrumented systems (CASIS) performance for all upstream oil and gas assets. To date, it has been a challenge to automate the monitoring of these devices due to the lack of common systems in place across BP’s facilities, according to aeSolutions.
aeShield allows centralized reporting, standard enforcement consistent with internal procedures, reduced man-hours, monitored IPLs and efficient management of change (MOC) tracking, according to the company. During initial rollout, BP will reportedly focus on HAZOP/LOPA studies, safety requirements specification, SIL verification and IPL…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

A new nonmetallic catalyst promises to enable economical hydrogen-based substitution reactions that now require expensive or hazardous synthesis routes.

A new nonmetallic catalyst promises to enable economical hydrogen-based substitution reactions that now require expensive or hazardous synthesis routes, e.g., making hydrosilanes from chlorosilanes as well as hydrides from halides, believe researchers at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. The borane catalyst splits hydrogen molecules under mild conditions and should suit broad-scale use, they say.
The researchers created the catalyst by introducing boron atoms into a common organic molecule (Figure 1). The catalyst provides ambiphilic metal-like reactivity toward H2; tests so far indicate yields are comparable to conventional metallic catalysts.
“What we additionally need is just an electron source. In the laboratory we chose…

A carbon-based molecular sieve membrane combined with a reverse osmosis process could significantly reduce energy needed to separate alkyl aromatics hydrocarbon molecules, says a research team from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech),…

Conco Systems, Pty Ltd. of Heatherbrae, Australia, an affiliate of Conco Services Corporation in Verona, PA, USA, acquires Gogolok IndustrieService GmbH (GIS) of Magdeburg, Germany. GIS specializes in industrial cleaning of plate heat exchangers, air cooled condensers and general maintenance cleaning services. The incorporation of GIS infrastructure, human resources and service capabilities into the Conco family will support Conco’s growth in the European market and an expansion of the global service portfolio, according to the company.
Conco Systems Pty Ltd. is the Australian contingent of a worldwide group of Conco companies providing condenser and heat exchanger products and services to the power generation and industrial sectors.

The U.S. Department of Energy announces nearly $25 million to enable innovative electrical motors used in manufacturing.

The U.S. Department of Energy announces nearly $25 million for 13 projects aimed at advancing energy-efficient electric motor technologies through applied research and development. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Next Generation Electric Machines projects will address the limitations of traditional materials and designs used in electric motor components by cost-effectively enhancing their efficiency, improving their performance and reducing weight. This effort will support approaches to improve the technology in industrial electric motors, which use approximately 70% of the electricity consumed by U.S. manufacturers and nearly a quarter of all electricity consumed nationally, according to EERE.
Improvements…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Advisory firm International eChem says that warning signs from the chemical industry point to a global recession in 2017, according to an article from Investment Week. The global chemical capacity utilization percentage (CU%), a measure which the firm says correlates closely to global GDP, reportedly dropped to its lowest level since 2009 this year, which the firm warns is an indicator of global economic slowdown.
The CU% has reportedly been in a steady decline for the last year, according to the firm’s chairman Paul Hodges. In the article, Hodges also warns of increased currency volatility due to protectionism-driven trade wars.
Read more about the firm's predictions here.

Transferring expertise and knowledge of experienced staff to engineers beginning their careers is hardly a new issue for chemicals makers. However, the ongoing wave of retiring baby boomers (see: “Retirement Casts a Long Shadow”) is prompting…

Siemens Water Solutions will use Meidensha Corporation’s ceramic flat-sheet membrane in its new PACT Membrane Bioreactor for wastewater treatment.

Siemens Water Solutions will reportedly use Meidensha Corporation’s ceramic flat-sheet membrane in its new PACT Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) for wastewater treatment in the oil refinery and petrochemical industries, and other wastewater treatment environments. Siemens PACT technology has reportedly been installed at more than 100 locations.
Siemens’ PACT MBR is a powdered activated carbon-based wastewater treatment system that provides biological/physio-chemical/and ultrafiltration technology in a single, compact system, according to Meidensha. After extensive testing, Siemens approved Meidensha’s ceramic flat-sheet membrane for use in its PACT MBR system because of the membrane’s durability, abrasion resistance and long service life…

Debate continues over the merits of putting a price on carbon emissions — with many businesses opposing such a move. However, an increasing number of companies are adopting carbon pricing, according to a report released in September by CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), London, a not-for-profit organization backed by institutional investors and others. The publication notes that carbon pricing already has spurred some firms to reallocate investments.
Called “Embedding a Carbon Price into Business Strategy,” the report summarizes the disclosures of companies around the world that responded to CDP’s 2016 climate-change and supply-chain information requests. A total of 1,249 firms revealed that they already price carbon…

With the aim to reduce toxic exposure, agency fast tracks the evaluation of five chemicals

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is continuing its brisk pace to be on target with implementing the new requirements of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century…

Manufacturers must evaluate where to focus efforts to protect sensitive data.

Cybercriminals love chemical companies. In fact, IBM X-Force Research’s 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index cites chemical companies as one of the top targets for attackers, according to an article from Manufacturing Business Technology. The attacks are reportedly often financially-motivated and state-sponsored attempts to steal intellectual property and trade secrets.
So what can manufacturers do? The article’s author lays out a list of prevention methods beginning with a vulnerability management plan and ongoing vulnerability scans. According to the article, manufacturers should also promote company-wide security awareness, prepare an incident response plan, harden the security configurations of systems and servers and evaluate…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

Locate suppliers in the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.

The year in review recalls some of the most important events of 2016, and the 2017 Supplier Sourcing Guide Directory is a look forward – a tool we hope helps you throughout the new year.
The 2017 Supplier Source Guide is an easy-to-use guide to help locate suppliers to the chemical, petrochemical and refining industries.
The guide is broken out into five primary categories:1. Asset Management2. Automation3. Environmental Protection4. Processing Equipment5. Safety/Security.
Each of these main categories includes several product sub-categories listed within them.
This easy-to-use directory lists suppliers in 43 categories of equipment, products, services and software. We also have a special section focusing on 72 engineering, construction…

If you use desiccant air dryers in your plant, you probably know they can consume a lot of energy dollars. Much of this money often is wasted. However, you likely can take a number of steps to reduce your desiccant dryer costs and improve the dryer operation, leading to better air quality. Here, we’ll look at five factors worth attention: specifications check, dryer control, desiccant protection, adjustments and maintenance.
First let’s consider operating costs, though. Compressed air is one of the most expensive utilities to use in doing anything in your plant. This is because of the poor “wire to work” conversion efficiency of the compression process. Only ≈10–15% of the energy put into a compressor actually converts to…

The U.S. Department of Energy announces nearly $25 million to enable innovative electrical motors used in manufacturing.

The U.S. Department of Energy announces nearly $25 million for 13 projects aimed at advancing energy-efficient electric motor technologies through applied research and development. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Next Generation Electric Machines projects will address the limitations of traditional materials and designs used in electric motor components by cost-effectively enhancing their efficiency, improving their performance and reducing weight. This effort will support approaches to improve the technology in industrial electric motors, which use approximately 70% of the electricity consumed by U.S. manufacturers and nearly a quarter of all electricity consumed nationally, according to EERE.
Improvements…

The new website is designed to be more visually appealing and user friendly.

Paratherm – Heat Transfer Fluids introduces a newly redesigned website. The new website is designed to be more visually appealing and user friendly, according to the company. The new Paratherm website reportedly performs many of the same duties as Paratherm employees in assisting hot oil system users and others interested in indirect heating technology.
The website is aimed at fluid customers, OEM design engineers, process managers, fluid specifiers and maintenance professionals. It provides technical details of Paratherm heat transfer fluid products, including product data, safety data and physical and thermal properties. The website also offers technical advice regarding hot-oil system safety, maintenance and reliability and detailed…

Water availability is a growing concern, prompting important initiatives by chemical companies, as our recent cover story “Keep Calm and Save Water,” underscores. Of course, the issue has much broader implications — and this has led to the…

Focusing on an implementation’s true consequences can lead to more cost-effective results

Undertaking an energy assessment can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be if the energy expert can understand and follow an “impact analysis.” So, this column will cover this methodology and cite a few examples of how to undertake an impact analysis while doing energy assessments.
Published ASME standards for energy assessments provide a good starting point and offer guidelines for conducting these assessments. Nevertheless, our resources — budgets, human resources, and time — are always limited. Hence, there’s a strong need to undertake energy assessments from an impact-level perspective and increase the cost-effectiveness of these efforts. We are still talking about a systems approach; I’m not suggesting cutting…

Partnering Proves Profitable

Chemical makers increasingly look for outside help to improve performance

Plant-wide, company-wide and even worldwide initiatives are driving better co-operation within and among chemical processing companies and the myriad organizations in their supply chains in today's global marketplace.

In the past, such initiatives have foundered as a result of fragmented approaches and a lack of sophisticated tools — leaving behind a legacy of inaccuracy, inefficiency and missed opportunities (www.ChemicalProcessing.com/articles/2008/012.html).

Today, however, it's a different story. Firms are harnessing everything from advanced analytics to human resources (HR) management as they strive to improve coordination along the entire supply chain and transform how chemical plants operate.

"Asset management covers so many topics these days, but it's really compliance and sustainability that everyone is struggling with. If you talk with company executives, these are always in the top three," says Elinor Price, director product marketing for AspenTech, Burlington, Mass. "However, their responses vary when you ask what exactly their companies are doing in this regard. In the U.S., for example, people know what needs to be measured, but can still surprise us with how they go about doing this. Taking figures long-hand and putting them into monthly reports is still happening," she adds.

"Chemical processing is getting a bit like pharma now — for example, the need for 3–5 years of data storage and the requirement for real time monitoring," explains Price.

Sustainability implies knowledge of carbon footprints, but this isn't simple to measure. "It is important that calculations are done in the correct order: the complexity of environmental reporting involves much more than the engineer dumping results in an Excel spreadsheet. In future this process will be more dynamic as emissions trading and credits take off," Price notes.

Improved Monitoring

She cites a global cement company, which is working with AspenTech on a project to look at its emissions caps from the whole supply chain perspective: the company is using differences in emissions caps from country to country to plan production across the entire company rather than on a site-wide — or even a country-wide — basis.

At Dow Chemical, Midland, Mich., one of the company's main focuses over the past decade has been to optimize its production units worldwide to achieve global improvements in performance and improve sustainability. This has involved organizational and methodological changes based on advanced process control (APC) and real time optimization (RTO) solutions. With more than 24 RTO projects now complete and 20 more underway, the company estimates it's already saved nearly $1 billion in 10 years.

"Dow began with APC on its ethylene facilities and is now focused on applying it to smaller processes. APC will be very important to the successful integration of the recently-acquired Rohm & Haas facilities, too," notes Price.

Closing the gap between planning and execution also is important to Cabot, Boston, Mass., which is working on a long-term strategy to streamline activities at its carbon black plants worldwide. It aims to replace existing manual processes and customized tools at each plant to improve information available to schedulers and enrich communication along the entire supply chain. So far the company has rolled out Aspen Plant Scheduler to 22 carbon-black and five fumed-metal-oxide sites.

"Cabot has plants all over the world and wanted to standardize its product so that carbon black from every facility was absolutely identical. That would give them tremendous supply-chain flexibility. Huge savings have been made because the company no longer has to hold so much inventory. And we are seeing a lot more of this sort of APC application," says Price.

She sees a trend in the evolution of "lighter" controllers for smaller units such as those used by specialty chemicals producers. "In the future, there will be batch process control once the dynamics have been fully understood. However, closer at hand is adaptive modeling, which is tentatively aimed at a Q1 2010 launch. We are currently doing extensive data testing with a number of customers in both Europe and the U.S."

A Changing EnvironmentEnvironmental regulations, notably REACH in Europe (www.ChemicalProcessing.com/articles/2009/219.html), are compelling stronger communication along the supply chain and leading to partnerships. For instance, regulatory compliance has been one of the driving forces behind AspenTech's tie-up with International Environmental Associates (IEA), Houston, a company that focuses on delivery of compliance programs. Together they have been working with BASF, Ludwigshafen, Germany, on a system to monitor ground-flare hydrocarbon emissions (Figure 1).

To this end, IEA has developed an environmental monitoring and compliance suite of applications that operate in an Aspen InfoPlus.21 environment. Now, adverse events trigger automatic notification of BASF personnel, while online access to emissions data allows immediate agency notifications.

Regulatory compliance, of course, requires myriad operational data. So, processors are investing in the sort of rugged hardware and software solutions that allow acquiring and processing vast amounts of data as quickly as possible.

For example, the downstream manufacturing division of Royal Dutch Shell, The Hague, the Netherlands, has entered into a multi-year partnership with Invensys Operations Management (IOM), London, U.K., to utilize Invensys' Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile workforce and decision-support solution as one tool in the ensure safe production (ESP) initiative at 29 of its global manufacturing facilities.

The IntelaTrac system, which includes both configurable software and rugged intrinsically safe hardware, will help Shell operators, field engineers and supervisors create, define and routinely execute equipment surveillance and regulatory procedures following best practices, corporate policies and regulatory mandates. It will alert operators executing in-the-field procedures on their mobile computers to potential equipment issues in real time so that they can take corrective action immediately, as well as maintain regulatory compliance.

REACH, for one, also is making it increasingly important to have as much information as possible on hand about individual chemical species. This has spurred a new alliance between AspenTech and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, Colo., that has enabled the company to add more than 15,000 chemical species to its physical property database. "In the future, we plan to extend the database to include binary data, too," notes Sanjeev Mullick, director product marketing.

Sometimes, though, it's not lack of data, but the varied types and forms of data that's a key problem. "Advances in IT have been a hidden gold mine for many manufacturers. Access to data is often not the issue," says Keith McPherson, director, Rockwell Automation, Milwaukee, Wis. Instead, the challenge is connecting multiple data sources — real-time, historical, relational and transactional — to create a single resource that can access, aggregate and correlate information. Such cohesive information improves decision-making for the manufacturing environment — from inventory to maintenance, quality to production all the way through the enterprise, including the supply chain, he explains.

To help manufacturers better monitor and manage productivity in real time and thus make more insightful decisions about business priorities such as global supply chain management, Rockwell has introduced FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI business intelligence software. The new application is based on a unified production model (UPM) that pulls together seemingly disparate manufacturing data and gives a context for relationships among equipment, product, materials and people. The UPM organizes various manufacturing and enterprise data using commonly referenced business terms such as "equipment," "batches," or "manufacturing lots."

The new application suits single or multiple manufacturing problems, on one manufacturing line or across a global enterprise. In addition, the software can handle specific manufacturing needs like downtime reporting, status tracking or multiple control-system reporting.

Human Resources, TooBASF looked for outside help to radically improve its pan-European HR capabilities so staff could connect with specialist HR services more easily. Transforming how its chemical plants operate also was one of the key drivers for the effort.

More than a third of the company's 97,000 worldwide employees work at its complex in Ludwigshafen. However, each of BASF's European production sites had its own HR department. This was relatively costly and hampered standardizing processes, analyzing operations and developing best practices.

By leveraging its extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and HR expertise, IBM Global Business Services, Armonk, N.Y., helped BASF implement and integrate SAP applications to create two shared HR service centers — one for Ludwigshafen and one for European group companies — and introduce self-service kiosks in production facilities that enable workers to access HR services online for the first time.

Real-time reporting on HR activity aids BASF in designing new HR services based on user demand and feedback. SAP CRM manages HR processes from end to end, automatically routing enquiries to the appropriate HR specialist, so users have a single point of contact for all HR-related issues.

"By leveraging the SAP CRM and employee self-service applications, we now only need 110 HR specialists to serve more than 36,000 employees in Ludwigshafen, and Europe-wide we serve 18,000 employees with 90 HR specialists — so it is a very cost-effective solution," says Peter Schimbeno, global HR governance.

"In the near future we are hoping to extend this use of the business intelligence function to help us do more than just optimize processes. Through monitoring the usage of the existing services and gaining feedback from our end users, we will be able to identify where new services should be developed — responding to the user ecosystem in a much more proactive fashion than was ever possible before," he adds.

A Stronger VoiceA new strategic initiative by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), Arlington, Va., which now mainly includes large chemical manufacturers, aims to expand membership to small- and medium-sized companies as well as value-chain partners (though an affiliate membership category).

"The business of chemistry is facing an unprecedented number of global and domestic policy challenges — from product attacks, to chemical managementreform, to climate change, facility security and rail competition," notes Cal Dooley, ACC president and CEO. "We believe our initiative will attract new members, expand ACC's advocacy base, enhance the reach of the Responsible Care program, and enable the industry to speak with a stronger and more effective voice," he adds.